


The Words Of A God

by nowhere_dawn_death_phan



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Adam is a slimy bastard, Adam!AU, Betrayal, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Hero Worship, I dont know what to tag, Ianto goes through a lot of shit, Ianto goes through some shit, Murder, Not Canon Compliant, Retconning, post-episode s2e05 (Adam), suicide references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:59:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22992079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_dawn_death_phan/pseuds/nowhere_dawn_death_phan
Summary: Six months after Adam appeared in the Torchwood Hub one morning, life has returned to as close to normality as it ever does for them. The only problem? Nobody noticed Adam wasn't supposed to be there. Six months down the line, Tosh is as happy as she's ever been, Owen is slowly gaining his confidence, Gwen and Rhys are learning to rekindle their relationship, Jack has happy memories of his family still.And Ianto Jones?Well, Ianto Jones is something else entirely.
Relationships: Ianto Jones & Adam Smith, Ianto Jones & Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones & Owen Harper, Ianto Jones & Toshiko Sato, Toshiko Sato/Adam Smith
Comments: 17
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

When Ianto Jones woke that morning, he decided he was going to take a life.  
He woke to three texts on his phone. One from Jack, sent half an hour ago, saying he needed to come in to give Tosh a hand with the artefact they’d just found, one from Jack sent six minutes later, saying that there had been a change of plan, that he was now going with Adam to check out a possible Weevil sighting in Tenby, and one from just eight minutes before he’d woken, from Adam, simply saying - _Detour?  
_Ianto replied to Jack’s texts with a blunt _okay,_ and then turned his attention to Adam’s text. That one word held so much more meaning. Ianto knew they would find no Weevils in Tenby because the rift didn’t stretch that far, knew they might not even be going to Tenby, but also knew that not investigating on the off-chance the rift had spread wasn’t a risk Jack was willing to take. He was halfway through typing out a reply when Adam sent another message containing an address, followed by a third stating - _bring the coat.  
_The address was Adam’s address, a cramped little flat not far from the city centre. He lived alone, but spent most of his time at Tosh’s apartment anyway. They’d been together a year and a half now.  
The coat was thick and black and fell to his knees with a row of buttons up the front, woollen with a high collar and broad lapels. Adam had brought him it six months ago as a reward. Six months already. How time flies when you’re having fun.  
Ianto replied to the text, walked into his kitchen, put on a pot of coffee and headed into his bathroom. He showered quickly and washed his hair but didn’t bother to brush it, went back into the kitchen, poured the coffee into a chipped mug that had once been Lisa’s and took it into the bedroom. Getting dressed, this was always the tricky part. He pulled his holdall out from under the bed and tossed a tie and a light blue shirt into it. He wouldn’t put a tie on now, he’d made that mistake already. He’d worn his favourite once, and Adam had taken it away to be destroyed. He chose his older pair of shoes - no sense in ruining his decent pair, and put the decent pair in his bag. He put on a dark red shirt, no waistcoat and a black blazer, slipping the old shoes on. He put his waistcoat into the bag - he wouldn’t be going to the Hub this morning, nobody would notice he wasn’t dressed how he usually was.

His phone buzzed again, another text from Adam, and Ianto made his way back into the living room of his apartment, taking his coffee with him. He switched on the radio, tilting his head appreciatively at the sound coming from it, and started drinking his coffee as he made breakfast - a few slices of buttered toast. His phone buzzed again, almost impatiently, and he glanced down at it, accepting the call as it came through.  
“Morning.”  
“Where are you? I texted you ages ago.”  
“Getting ready. I’ll only be a minute. Shall I walk to you?”  
“Have you packed the holdall?”  
Ianto glanced through the open doorway at it, lying innocently on the floor next to his coffee table. “Yep.”  
“Then no, I’ll come to you. You’ve got five minutes. Jack’ll be suspicious if we don’t head out soon.”  
“We’re actually _going_ to Tenby?”  
Adam laughed. “We are, Jonesy,” and then the line went dead.  
Ianto sighed, finished the rest of his coffee, and left the mug on the side next to the sink, wrapping one slice of toast in clingfilm and placing it in the holdall along with his clothes. He’d end up eating it later. It always made him hungry. It had taken him a while to get used to eating straight afterwards, but now if he hadn’t eaten all morning he could finish a Sunday roast before the blood had even dried.  
He sat down on his sofa to eat his second slice of toast, finishing it just as a car horn blared from the street outside.  
Ianto picked up the holdall, swung it over his shoulder, snatched his coat from the peg by the door, tossed it over his arm, grabbed his keys from the fruit bowl and left his apartment, the radio still buzzing out its constant stream of detuned static into the air.

The car aggressively honking at him was a silver BMW, its driver a Londoner only a year or two older than Ianto himself. Ianto staggered down the staircase to pavement level, out onto the street, opening the boot of the car and throwing his black holdall next to the one already in there. He tossed his coat on top of it and slammed the lid of the boot, the car shaking.  
“Oi, watch it.” Adam called to him, honking the horn again.  
Ianto slid into the passenger seat, closing the door and looking across at Adam.  
“You ready?” Adam asked, looking at him. He had that half-smile on his face, the one that would have meant mischief if mischief was brutal murder.  
“Tenby?” Ianto asked, somewhat disbelieving.  
Adam shrugged. “Far enough away that we can spend the whole day out, nobody gets suspicious if we don’t get back until after dark. If we don’t come back with a Weevil then we tell Jack the rift hasn’t spread that far. Job done.  
Ianto leant his head against the window. “And Tosh didn’t check rift activity?”  
“If she did, she wouldn’t have seen anything anyway. We’re only supposed to monitor Cardiff, and anyway, anything further away than the boundaries of Glamorgan and a little bit of Monmouthshire doesn’t show up on any of the monitors.”  
“And if they find the body?”  
“We tell Jack the Weevil got to them, but that we killed it and destroyed it. He’s not going to hike Owen halfway across Wales to examine a body when his two most reputable agents have the exact same story as to what went down.”  
Ianto smiled. “Perfect cover.”  
Adam revved the engine on the BMW. “Only the best for my acolyte.”  
Ianto smiled wider at the phrase as Adam put the car in gear and revved it again, and a few seconds later it had disappeared into the wintery Cardiff sunrise, heading for the south-west coast.


	2. Chapter 2

Ianto Jones had loved Jack Harkness once. But that had been before. He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped loving Jack, only that one day he had. One day all of that tenderness and affection had gone, and Jack was just another obstacle in his way, only a slightly trickier one. It wasn’t as if Ianto could kill him after all, he’d only come back, and then he’d know what Ianto had done. And Ianto wouldn’t let Adam do it, let him take the fall. Never.   
Ianto Jones had loved Jack Harkness once. And then there had been Adam. Adam had given him something better than love. Had given him life, a purpose - and it was beautiful. 

The two of them walked along the seafront from Tenby to Penally, Ianto with an ice cream and Adam complaining his shoes were full of sand and bits of seashell.   
Adam picked up a rock from the waterfront and skipped it with a fluid and practiced motion. “Isn’t this better than being stuck underground in that dingy old hub all day? Fresh air, a cool breeze. Sunlight.”  
Ianto squinted into the sun. “It’s noon.”  
Adam glanced at his watch, kicking aimlessly at a pile of sand. “It is. We’ll head back into the town in a minute, start searching.”  
Ianto finished his ice cream. “For the Weevil?”  
Adam looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, for the Weevil.”  
Ianto smiled. “Nice.”  
“So we find the...Weevil, and you know the rest, right? Once it’s over, I’ll get the bags, you sit tight, we get cleaned up and back to Cardiff.”  
Ianto looked at him. “And…my reward?”  
Adam smirked. “Always so eager. I’ll see. Depends how well you do with this one.” He slung his arm around Ianto’s shoulder for a second before dropping it. “Come on, Jonesy. The world is wide and the day is young.” 

They strolled easily back along the seafront, Ianto watching the rolling waves. He knew enough geography to know that if he got on a boat at this exact spot and went perfectly straight, he’d just about miss the bottom of Ireland and keep sailing onwards until he hit the east coast of America. It was somehow a comforting thought, that the endless expanse would lead to something new. He turned back to Adam, who had his hands in his jean pockets, walking with the sort of swagger that Ianto found mesmerising. Everything about him was mesmerising, come to think of it. At one point, he’d been scared by what Adam had shown him. But the more he’d remembered of it, the easier it grew to handle. Maybe he was desensitised, or maybe Adam had changed his tact, maybe he wanted Ianto to enjoy it instead of fear it. Ianto couldn’t help but feel honoured. Here was a man with ultimate power at his fingers. He could do anything, be anyone, level cities, rule countries, tear a continent apart with his bare hands, turn a whole galaxy on another with a thought. He was a god. And he had chosen Ianto to look after, to protect, to teach and to nurture and to share his gift with.   
Ianto didn’t know, didn’t understand why Adam had chosen him to bring salvation to out of all of them, when there was Owen who needed bringing out of his shell, Jack who needed taking down a peg. Gwen, with a fiancé she couldn’t quite recover her spark with. Or Tosh, his lover, his supposed life. But what he did know was that he would do anything Adam asked, anything, until the end of time. Without question, without hesitation, with nothing but sheer blind loyalty because when a god gives you an order you do not question him, you get down on your knees and you perform.  
Ianto wasn’t stupid enough to think Adam would ever consider him to be his equal, how could he? But he was devoted, and dedicated to him. Because Adam had given him everything he could ever desire, freedom and courage and a slice of power, the merest increment of control over the world around him. And Ianto would die before letting Adam down, before giving up that gift.

He was startled out of his thoughts as Adam playfully hit him on the top of the arm. “Come on then, Jonesy. Tell me, what thoughts are rattling around in that funny little head of yours?”  
Ianto shook his head. “Nothing important, not really.”  
Adam spun on his heel, coming to a stop directly in front of Ianto. He placed his hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. “Really, Ianto? You’re going to lie to me like that? After everything we’ve done together, you’re just going to lie?”  
Ianto ducked his head but didn’t try to shake Adam off. “Just thoughts. I-I don’t think I remember what they were anymore.”  
Adam let go of Ianto’s shoulders, stepping back, and smiled an easy smile. “Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it, mate?” and without another word, he turned back on his heel, walking away.  
Ianto followed, his head feeling like it was being held underwater, and it took him twenty paces to realise he was no longer holding his ice cream.


	3. Chapter 3

Adam was sprawled languidly on the bench in front of the church, his arms spread out on either side of him, head tilted back, squinting into the sun.  
He looked, Ianto thought from his position sat on the curb at his feet, like Jesus suspended on the cross. The wind ruffled his hair, a few of the light brown strands dancing in the soft breeze. The sea front had been cold, the rough wind blowing from straight across the ocean. Further inland it was slightly warmer, the streets built up around them serving as a windbreak.   
Ianto realised at second glance that Adam had his eyes closed and was smiling faintly, the sunlight seeming to centre exactly on his face, framing him in its glow.  
“Do you feel it, Jonesy? The rush? The thrill? Do you feel it building?” His voice was a whisper, one that by all rights should have been lost to the wind, but somehow Ianto could hear every word of it as clearly as if he was standing right in front of him.  
Ianto didn’t answer, he knew by now that Adam wasn’t actually asking him for his thoughts or opinions, and that offering them wasn’t always the correct course of action.  
Adam opened his eyes, sitting forwards, smiling. “Your choice, today.”  
Ianto’s eyes widened. “Mine?”  
Adam’s smile grew. “Did I stutter, Jonesy? Yours. Go ahead.”

Ianto paused for a long moment, thinking, and then shifted himself up onto the bench, sitting next to Adam. “Whoever?”  
“Take your pick.”  
They’d chosen a path where three roads converged, so they were sitting at the top point of the triangle, and despite the winter chill, the streets were busy. Families with children wrapped up tightly in coats and scarves, couples buttoned up in a desperate attempt to keep out the cold. Trying to find a person out alone was difficult, Ianto scanning faces back and forth as they passed him by.  
He raised a hand eventually, a little ashamed to see it was shaking. “That one.”  
It was a woman who had just finished using the cash machine outside the Tesco opposite, busy putting her money into a wallet. She was maybe twenty, tall, blonde hair, glasses, with a University of Wales Trinity Saint David tote bag on her shoulder. A student. They weren’t far enough from Carmarthen that it would go unnoticed if she went missing, it wasn’t like Tenby was a world away. Maybe she wasn’t Welsh and there wouldn’t be as many people noticing she was missing, or if she was, maybe she was studying at the Swansea or Lampeter campus, not the Carmarthen one. But that was unlikely, Carmarthen was the closest campus.  
Adam smiled appreciatively. “Good choice.” His voice was low and warm in Ianto’s ear, and he tried not to shiver.   
Adam stood, stretched, watched the direction the woman walked in then set off after her. Ianto waited a few more seconds fiddling with the buttons on his already closed coat before following suit, trying to make the movement look organic. Adam was keeping maybe seven or so metres behind her, occasionally allowing himself to fall back or lose her in a crowd, though there were so many people, Ianto doubted she’d have noticed them anyway.

Adam was exceptionally plain to look at, all things considered. Below average height but not incredibly so, brown hair, light blue eyes, black skinny jeans, plain blue t-shirt, leather jacket. Inconspicuous, he blended so neatly into a crowd that even Ianto lost track of him at points. It served a purpose, he supposed. Nobody looked twice at him, he was all too easy to forget. Or to remember.   
The woman stopped at the entrance to a coffee shop, allowing a family to exit before she walked in, and Adam stopped at the corner behind her, a bookstore. Ianto caught up with him a few seconds later, and Adam turned to face the road, leaning the back of his head against the glass shopfront.   
“Plan?” Ianto asked quietly, pretending to look at the books on display.  
Adam rolled his head on his neck to look at the girl, who was at the back of the three person queue. “Educated guess? She’ll be easy. Maybe a fraction too easy for you, you sure you don’t want to pick anybody else, have a little bit of fun.”  
Ianto shook his head. “Nope. Her. First time and all that.”  
“First time choosing. I’ll loosen them up for you, I always do. You could pick a six foot eight rugby hooker and I’d loosen him up enough for you. It’s all about practise, Jonesy. Branch out a little. Expand your horizons. Young girl after young girl, it gets dull.”  
“Not to me.” Ianto said softly. “Play it safe.”  
Adam pushed himself off of the glass as the woman walked out, drink in hand. “She’s on the move, come on.”  
Ianto followed him again, coat wrapped around himself, hands shoved deep in its pockets. It made him feel protected, somehow. And it was cold enough that wearing it didn’t attract any attention, not like it had in the slightly warmer months.   
Ianto wasn’t sure how Adam wasn’t cold, he never seemed to get cold. He didn’t have a coat, just his leather jacket, and that didn’t exactly seem thick. But still, he strode onwards. Crowds seemed to part for him, people moving out of his way and falling back into place once he’d passed them by, as if they could feel the power he emanated, as if they knew of his gloriousness. Ianto didn’t realise he’d stopped walking until somebody collided with him, and he apologised, drawing his coat around himself and hurrying after Adam.

Adam’s hand came to lay on his shoulder. “You alright? Lost you there for a second, mate.”  
Ianto nodded. “Crowds. Wouldn’t let me through.”  
Adam pulled him out of the street into the cover of a doorway. “Not a problem. She’s gone into that restaurant.” He pointed to the opposite side of the street, a Tudor building with black rafters and heavy oaken doors.   
“So, what do we do now?” Ianto asked.  
“We eat,” said Adam, pointing to the base of the doorway they were standing in, and Ianto turned. A tea shop. Adam hooked his hand into Ianto’s elbow and pulled him into the warmth of the cafe, sitting down in a window seat. “We can sit now, and eat for a bit. When she leaves, so do we.”  
They sat for maybe an hour, Adam with a slice of carrot cake and a glass of pink lemonade, Ianto with a ham panini and some coffee. It was starting to get dark by the time the woman left, and Adam was up in an instant.  
“Ready?” He asked.  
“Always.” Ianto replied with a smile.  
Adam dropped a handful of money onto the table, not caring that he’d overpaid by £10 and walked out onto the street, pushing Ianto in front of him.  
Adam let the tea shop door clang shut behind him and smiled, taking a deep breath of the dark air. “Well Jonesy, the chase is on.”


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t quite as much of a chase as Adam made it out to be; it never was. There were less crowds now as the afternoon chill had swept in, but the early evening darkness gave them roughly the same cover as the bustle of the day had. Adam had his hands in his pockets again, shoulders squared, strolling casually as if he was simply on his way to the pub. The woman stopped, taking her phone out of her pocket. They’d follow her until Ianto had had his fill of the chase, he’d give the signal and then the fun would really begin. After a moment she put her phone away again, and carried on walking.   
While the streets were mostly empty, it wasn’t exactly a ghost town. There were lights on, pubs and restaurants still open because despite the darkness it wasn’t all that late. There were others on the street, and they’d nodded at Adam and Ianto as they passed.   
They made their way through the town, following her at a careful distance. Down past the sweet shop, back and forth, up and down the same roads over and over again. Ianto could tell she didn’t come to Tenby often, he’d worked out that she was using the map on her phone and was still struggling. If you’d asked Ianto, he’d have said Tenby wasn’t really all that complicated until you got to the heart of it, and even then you’d have to try bloody hard to get lost in it.   
He hadn’t noticed Adam had caught up to her earlier when Ianto had gotten stuck in the crowd, erasing her memories of the town with a simple word and a tap.

They moved down with her past the harbour, towards the base of the castle and the ramp leading down to the beach. If they got onto the sand they’d have an issue, so Ianto indicated to Adam quickly, and he stepped forwards.  
“Jessica!” He called, going for the first name he could think of.  
The woman stopped, glancing around and rather suddenly realising she was the only person he could be talking to.  
Adam jogged over, shifting smoothly and instantly into the awkward persona he’d adopted for this situation. “Jessica, right? From senior school?”  
The woman looked a little bewildered, and before she could react, Adam had reached forward and lay a hand on her shoulder, squeezing. “Senior school, remember?”  
In a moment, the woman’s anxious posture had relaxed, and she smiled, pushing her hair back off her face. “Adelaide.”  
Adam stepped back, clicking his fingers. “Adelaide, that’s it. God, sorry, been a while.”  
She smiled again, and then reached forwards to hug him. “It has, it has.”   
Ianto watched from the darkness, his back pressed against the rough stone wall. It never failed to amaze him how one touch from Adam could make somebody go from total stranger to best friend in seconds. It was glorious. He could watch it happen forever, the realisation in their eyes as they recognised him for the first time, like having a blindfold torn off to face a blinding light. Some part of him wished Adam could do that to him, so that he could capture the joy of seeing him for the first time over and over again. 

The two of them talked for a while, discussing events that had never occurred with unnerving levels of detail and clarity. They laughed, swapping anecdotes of days together and days passed since then. As he heard them joke and talk, Ianto almost felt jealous. He knew what was happening between them wasn’t real, that Adam had put it in place to make his job easier, but it still hurt. It still made him burn, made him fill with a hot anger. Not at Adam, Adam was doing this for him, he knew that. Adam didn’t have those memories, he was pulling them out of thin air, not his own head. But her, Adelaide? Those memories were real to her. They were real and true and as she talked to Adam she felt genuine care for him, friendship and camaraderie and emotion. It felt like she was trying to take him away, somehow. As if she meant more to him than Ianto did, just because she thought she remembered him from a few years before. Just because she had all of these ideas about him, these concepts and fragments of events that she thought they had done together.   
It was odd, Adam’s ability. He was six or seven years older than this girl, but with a touch had convinced them that they were in the same year at school. Had he aged her up in her memory? Aged himself down? Had he re-written somebody else out of her life? A childhood sweetheart? A sibling? A girlfriend or boyfriend? Not that it would matter, she wouldn’t live long enough to realise anyway, it was just interesting. He wished he could line up all the people that she’d ever met, ask her which ones she still remembered and which one she’s forgotten and see how they reacted to it, to work out who was important to her and who wasn’t. He wished he could work out how often Adam implanting himself into others memories pushed somebody else. Was it a guaranteed side effect? One in ten? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? One in a million? Was Gwen the only person that it happened to? Across the spans of the thousands of universes Adam had travelled, was Gwen the only person out there that had experienced that? Had Adam ever met somebody who was immune to his power? How had he gotten around it? Was he part of an entire race, all with that same power or was he the only one? If he was part of a species that all had that ability, were they immune to the effects? If they weren’t, how did their society thrive without crumbling? Ianto had so many questions, things he’d never even considered before. He needed to ask Adam about them. Or maybe he already had? Maybe he’d questioned him and Adam had just taken away those memories?

No, no. Adam wouldn’t do that. Not to him. Ianto was his partner. If Ianto had asked him those questions, he wouldn’t have taken away those answers. He’d never taken a memory from Ianto, as far as he knew. He hadn’t taken away the memories of loving Jack, they were still there. He could reach for them, feel them, smooth them over in his mind, remember the way they’d felt. Adam hadn’t taken them, just made him think about them a little more, made him wonder if that was really what he wanted, helped him understand him that it wasn’t. He didn’t want Jack, he’d realised he was better off with Adam by his side instead.   
Jack had questioned him on it at first, seeming maybe a little confused and a little sceptical, but Adam had stepped in, sorted him out with a simple touch and a few reassuring words. Nobody had mentioned it again. Not Owen or Tosh or Gwen. Certainly not Jack, and Adam had given Ianto a curt nod of acknowledgement but said nothing else about it.  
That would be his reward today, Ianto decided. If he did well, if he was allowed a reward, he’d ask Adam about where he came from, about his family, his friends, his world. 

Ianto focused back on Adam and the conversation he was having. He’d turned on his heel, his arm around Adelaide’s shoulder. They were both facing him, Adam was looking straight at him, Adelaide looking at Adam, relaxed, almost happy. That meant it was almost time, that Adam had deemed her ready, and Ianto felt the buzz of excitement rise up inside him. He was in charge now, Adam was waiting for his signal, and when he gave the sign, he would, if only for a second, be in control of somebody's fate, hold their life in his metaphorical hands before taking it with his physical ones. Ianto nodded, a small signal that Adam saw only because he was looking for it. Adam slid his arm from around Adelaide’s shoulder, taking a step away from her, facing the other way, spreading his arms out and moving his head to look at the sea, turning his back to allow those moments to be Ianto’s and Ianto’s alone.   
“Your move, Jonesy.” He announced softly into the wind, more words that were so quiet they shouldn’t have been audible but somehow were, and Ianto Jones stepped out of the darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in this chapter. Life has gotten very complicated and very busy and I’m also currently working on another big project so there may be delays on updates for this fic, but I assure you that it has not been abandoned.

Ianto Jones stood with his head bent over the sink, watching the water pour onto the white porcelain, waiting for it to fully run clear. There was a tugging sensation as Adam yanked at his hair, and Ianto winced.  
They were standing in the public toilets near the ramp, Adelaide’s body long gone.  
Ianto felt the cold water splash from Adam’s cupped hands onto his shirt collar and run down his cheeks, and tried not to shiver. The sensation relented as Adam produced a black hand towel, tossing it to Ianto. In his opinion this level of fuss was uncalled for. The attacks were rarely violent enough that this level of clean up was necessary, and while this one had been one of his less restrained, he’d prefer to shower in his apartment than get scrubbed down by his coworker in a Tenby public toilet, but Adam seemed to enjoy making a performance of the whole thing, and Ianto had a while ago decided that keeping him happy didn’t hurt.   
The two holdalls lay on the floor at their feet. Ianto’s contained his clean clothes, Adam’s everything else they were likely to need. Their system was simple, Ianto would head to the nearest public toilets and lock himself in a cubicle. Adam would dispose of the body, head to the car, grab the bags and return to the toilets, knocking a particular rhythm to let Ianto know it was safe to come out. Adam, true to his nature, refused to pay the 20p entrance fee for the public toilets and instead opted for climbing the turnstile, which was always graceless enough of an endeavour that Ianto would have found it a comedic sight if he hadn’t been quite so awed by him.  
Adam had procured an “Out of Order” sign from somewhere a while back - Ianto thought it best not to ask exactly where or how - and he hung it on the entrance of the toilets each time to ensure they wouldn’t be disturbed during the clean up, lest the intended one casualty of the evening end up growing into more as a passerbye saw something they oughtn’t.   
“You did good.” Adam said, dropping the damp hand towel back into his holdall and rooting around for something else amongst the thick folds of canvas. A moment later he produced a bottle of hand sanitiser and some wet wipes, placing them on the side next to the sink. Ianto scrubbed at his hands and arms furiously under the tap, the heat from the water colouring his skin.   
“You did good.” Adam repeated, watching Ianto wash his hands with the sort of expression that lended itself to the idea that he thought of him as being a rare animal or a particularly interesting lab specimen. “That’s the best one yet, I’d say.” Exactly what criteria Adam was using to determine how good each attack was, Ianto didn’t know, so he just nodded before shaking his hands off and reaching for the hand towel from the holdall, drying his hands before turning them over and over under the light. Sometimes he missed a spot, and Adam was quick to berate him when he did.   
Adam caught hold of one of his wrists. There was blood under Ianto’s nails, they’d need clipping when he got home. Ianto didn’t shake himself free, only asking, “Where did you hide her?”  
Adam released his wrist, looking up at him. “In the sea. If they find her body, they’ll assume she went for a swim and the injury patterns will seem consistent with her getting dashed into the rocks. If we’re lucky they won’t find her, if we’re not, she’ll likely wash up on Caldey tomorrow morning and the monks will find her.”   
“In her clothes?”  
“I stripped her top layer off. Clothes are folded on top of her bag with her shoes, base of the ramp. We get extra lucky, maybe they rule it suicide.”  
Ianto nodded, and shrugged off his coat and blazer before unbuttoning his shirt. “Nobody saw you?”  
Adam shook his head. “Nobody around to see me, mate.”   
“Well, you might not know they saw you.”  
“Nobody saw me, now stop faffing and get changed.” Adam flicked out a hand that Ianto had to dodge to avoid. He didn’t question exactly how Adam had disposed of the body. He said in the sea, but as far as Ianto could tell he was bone dry, not even his shoes were wet. He once again decided he’d rather not know. 

Ianto dropped his shirt onto the floor, pulling his clean one out of his bag and buttoning it up carefully. His first one was unlikely to have been bloodied by the attack, and it was just as unlikely anybody had noticed what colour shirt he was wearing earlier, but Adam said they couldn’t be too careful, and so who was Ianto to disagree. He tied his tie while Adam wiped down the inside of the sink, the taps, and the handle of the toilet stall with the wet wipes before dropping them into a resealable sandwich bag.   
Ianto changed his shoes balanced on one leg, tying up the laces while Adam watched him, one eyebrow raised. Ianto felt, somewhat irrationally, like a naughty little kid being watched extra carefully by a disapproving parent, but stared back without complaint, returning both feet to the ground and buttoning his waistcoat without looking down. He was making eye contact with Adam, the older man's blue eyes filled with a placid sort of intensity, if such a combination could exist. With Adam it could, Adam who was a walking contradiction, who was everything right and wrong with the world in one.   
Ianto looked away, brushing a hand through the damp hair just above his ear. His fingers came away bloody and he frowned. “I thought I got it all off.”  
Adam moved around to his left. “You did. You’re bleeding.”  
Ianto ducked his head, swearing, bringing his hand up to cover the gash.   
Adam pulled his hand away. “Come here, Jonesy. Come. Here.”   
“Sorry.”  
“No, no, we all make mistakes. Was she wearing something with a buckle?”  
“Handbag.” Ianto muttered, the fading adrenaline rush making the stinging pain more obvious. “It had a buckle. You were supposed to take her handbag.”   
“All she had was her university bag, and that had a magnetic snap clip.” Adam told him gently, moving aside a section of Ianto’s hair with something that he might have been inclined to call affection, if he didn’t know Adam better than that. As it was he instinctively tensed at his closeness, holding his breath in anticipation.   
“Well, she must have had something.” He muttered after a moment of silence and stillness from Adam.   
“Did she scratch you?”  
Ianto jerked his head away. “She better bloody not have done.”  
Adam took Ianto’s face in his hands, forcing him to look down at him. “It’s fine. They don’t swab under the fingernails if it's classed as death by misadventure, and even if they do, the saltwater will corrupt the DNA, and they might not even find her body. So relax. Deep breath. It’s okay. I’ll get Owen to take a look at that when we get back to the Hub, but you should be fine.”  
Ianto nodded, wringing his hands nervously, and Adam slapped him lightly on the shoulder and nodded himself, though it seemed an absent sort of gesture.   
He waited for a minute to let Ianto calm himself down and then motioned like he was dusting his hands off, clearly a little unimpressed with the delay. “Right mate, let’s get this lot packed up and we’ll go.”  
Ianto nodded, continuing to get himself dressed. He folded his coat up, stuffing it back into the bag before pulling on his blazer again, studying himself in the mirror above the sink to make sure everything was all in order.  
Adam knocked the wet wipes and hand sanitiser into his bag with a well practised movement, collecting up everything else before he swung the holdall over his shoulder, and pointed out at the entrance. A moment later, Ianto picked his bag up as well, still adjusting his blazer subtly, and they walked through the turnstile into the cold Tenby night.

Ianto stood for a minute, looking first at the dark pile of clothes at the bottom of the ramp and then out at the sea. Maybe it’d come close enough to wash her possessions away, maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they’d find her body and maybe they wouldn’t. Was she out there somewhere, bobbing amongst the wine dark waves, all alone in the cold? Just out of their sight? Had the current pulled her down or just away? Adelaide. He didn’t know her surname. Still, he was sure he’d find out when it hit the papers. If they found her body she’d get a short mention, maybe a column on page seven. If they didn’t, that's when things would get interesting. There could be an appeal. He quite liked appeals. Some of them didn’t get appeals, they were just forgotten about. He did think that was the greatest tragedy of life, having nobody notice when you disappeared or died. He noticed. Maybe that was his way of giving back to them, somehow. In a few years time, he could be the last thing left to prove that they ever existed. That was a nice thought, he supposed. That they would exist for as long as he did, for as long as there was some part of him on earth, there was some part of them.  
“Jonesy!”   
Ianto spun to look at Adam. He was stood at the top of the ramp, bag over his shoulder, arms extended on either side of his body, silhouetted by the light from the town behind him. “Are you coming?”  
Ianto cast a glance back out to sea and nodded, heading up the ramp after Adam.


	6. Chapter 6

“Do I still get a reward?” Adam took his eyes off the road for a second to look at Ianto.  
“Depends what it is you want.”  
Ianto kept his gaze on the passing streetlights, not wanting to look at Adam. He’d let him down. Adam said he didn’t mind but Ianto could tell that he did. There was this quiet rage building up inside of him that he couldn’t quite hide. “Questions.”  
“Questions?”  
“Or answers. Whichever. I want to know about you, where you come from, your family, everything.”  
“Ask for something else.” Adam’s eyes were back on the road, glaring at the endless stretch of asphalt like he was trying to intimidate it.  
“But-”  
“Jonesy, _ask for something else._ ” Adam repeated, knuckles gripping the wheel so tightly they were bloodless, jaw clenched.  
Ianto rested his forehead against the cold glass of the window, watching his breath fog the surface as he sighed. “A coffee.”  
“Now see, that I think we can manage.”  
Ianto didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure if his original reward had been declined because he’d screwed up earlier and he didn’t deserve it or because Adam didn’t like talking about it, but either way he could tell that he was mad, and Ianto didn’t want to make it worse by pushing any further.  
After a moment Adam sighed, glancing back across at Ianto. “Sorry, Jonesy. That was dickish of me.”  
Ianto raised an eyebrow at the turn of phrase, it not being something he’d have expected to hear from Adam. The rough colloquialism was a change from his usual stilted tone, and the apology even more so.  
“You’re not mad?” Ianto asked gently.  
“I’m not mad.” Adam told him. “It was my fault. I give the orders, remember? He is your lightning-“  
“-And you, his sword.” Ianto said quietly, swallowing and nodding. That was their motto, and more than that it was a promise. A promise that if it went wrong anywhere, Adam would protect him. Adam would take the fall. He could afford to, after all.

Adam nodded, seeming satisfied, and then took a deep breath and spoke after a moment. “I was abandoned. By my people, by my family.”  
“How?” Ianto’s voice was soft, sympathetic, but with an edge of bitterness, and somewhere in the back of Adam’s head he felt the igniting spark of a shared memory. Interesting. He would need to look further into that.  
“When the Rift opened up, they didn’t want me.”  
“Why?”  
Adam took his eyes off the road. “Because I wasn’t good enough for them. Because I wasn’t like them. Because I didn’t want to follow their rules and play their games.”  
“So what happened?”  
“The Rift came. It-It wasn’t an accident. I didn’t _fall_ through, I-“  
“You were pushed.” It wasn’t a question, and the disbelief in Ianto’s tone had become anger at the injustice of it.  
Adam sighed, swallowed, looked back at the road. “Exactly.”  
“What-I mean...I mean, what was it like?” Ianto had seen the inside of the Rift before, come out somewhere new, but he felt like it wasn’t the same.  
“Horrible.” Adam’s voice was a dry whisper, hands tight on the wheel. “Falling down through the darkness and the fear forever. Not knowing which way was up, lost in the black. Screaming and tumbling and writhing and begging to be saved, even if all you’ve ever wanted is to die.”  
“Do you…” The question, ridiculous though it was, had come to Ianto’s mind unbidden, and something in the back of his head implored him to ask. “Did you pray?”  
Adam’s laugh was humourless. “To what? To a God?”  
“Yes.”  
“We are all our own Gods, Jonesy. Looking to a higher power for any worth is laughable at best and utterly pathetic at worst. Looking to a higher power for salvation is even worse. What interest would he have in a tiny creation like us? Humans, we’re nothing.”  
“You’re not human.”  
“I’m as close as they come.”

There was silence for a moment, just the clicking of the indicators as Adam changed lanes, a dull throbbing like an aching head. And then Adam took a deep breath. Like he was steeling himself, like there was worse still to come, somehow. “When I got out, when I _finally_ got out, and I thought it was over, I died.”  
Ianto was stunned into silence, waiting for Adam to continue. “I’d come so far, travelled for so long, that there was nobody left to remember me. I didn’t exist. I lay there in the dark, in the cold, listening to the shift and grind of the cogs of the universe, waiting for someone to find me, someone to notice me, to do something. Eventually they did. Someone from my world, my old world, found something, a photo or a letter or some indication that I’d once been there. They didn’t know me personally, but they knew that I existed. It wasn’t much, but enough that I came back. A flickering form more absent than not, lying face up in the early morning Cardiff rain, blinded by the beauty of the world and crawling through the streets, too weak to stand. I found a coffee shop, and with a tap and a word I made myself a regular. Same with a pub, then a corner shop, then a Chinese takeaway, and a post office. Inserted myself into memories, solidified myself piece by piece like putting together the outline of a jigsaw. I had a frame, a form. But the inside was blank. I could look but I couldn’t feel, I could touch but I couldn’t experience. And then I heard you.”  
“Me?”  
“Torchwood.”  
“Heard us how?” Ianto had forgotten that Adam had been angry at him, lost in the words of the story he was telling.  
“It was like a flare, so bright. A beacon hovering. Memories. Strong and fresh, lives so unique that no detail of your day was overlooked. A little taste of heaven after the darkness.”  
“And that's why you’re here? That’s all you want from us? Our memories?”  
“ _All I want?_ ” Adam repeated, voice hardening. “I want to live, Jonesy. That’s the most human want there is! The desire to survive. It’s primal, it’s instinctive. Buried right at the core of every being of sentience, and maybe some without, is the desire to survive. I don’t want to take your memories, I want to be a part of them. I want to exist within them.”  
Ianto nodded, pressing his forehead to the window glass again, closing his eyes. The conversation, it seemed, had drawn to a close. Adam got the final say. Adam always got the final say. But it made Ianto feel better. They were kindred spirits, him and Adam. And that made him feel something. Protected, perhaps. Special. Chosen. Adam glanced across at Ianto, took his eyes off the road for a second as he changed gears, and Ianto didn’t see it, but in the warm glow of the south west Wales street lamps, Adam smiled a wicked little smile.


	7. Chapter 7

The cog door opened with a whir, Adam already tossing his jacket onto a nearby chair. He didn’t know whose chair it was. It didn’t matter. “Owen!”   
A head appeared above a set of steps, blinking sheepishly. Doctor Owen Harper, wearing a slightly too small blue knit cardigan with a diamond pattern that made Adam think of a pack of cards, pushing a pair of thick black rimmed glasses up his nose, and smiling a nervous smile, as if he thought he’d been caught out somehow. “Um, yeah?”  
Adam pointed at Ianto as he also came through the door. “Patient for you.”  
“Right, yeah.” Owen nodded once, disappearing from sight. There was a clatter a few seconds later, possibly him tripping over an object that had been forgotten in his path, and Adam rolled his eyes. Something about him made the doctor nervous, but he didn’t know what. Whether it was his relationship with Tosh, or his demeanour, or maybe the doctor could just sense something was off about him, Adam wasn’t sure. But the two avoided each other wherever they could as a result. Not that it made a difference, it was even helpful, in a way.  
“What happened?” Owen asked as Ianto sat himself on the edge of the autopsy table, leaning his head forwards with a well-practised obedience.   
Adam sat down at his desk, propelling himself with his foot and spinning his chair in a lazy circle, twisting a pencil between his fingers. “He tripped. Pretty sure it’s just a graze but you know best.” Appealing to the doctor’s better nature worked usually. Maybe he’d come across as a touch patronising, but Owen was typically willing to overlook that, as genuine compliments from Adam were rare. 

A moment later, Owen had confirmed that it was “just a graze” and Ianto climbed the stairs out of the lab, collapsing on the sofa behind the desks with a sigh. Jack had clearly noticed their arrival as he came out of his office and into the main section of the Hub, leaning against the wall. “Update on the Weevil situation?”  
“No Weevil.” Adam said simply, bringing his chair to an unsteady stop, sprawled somewhat awkwardly on the faux leather seat. “Not even any Rift activity. We checked. Possible we might have missed something-“ Adam glanced at Ianto, “-but unlikely.”  
“That anonymous tip was a waste of time then?” Gwen asked, leaning on her elbow.  
Adam tapped the pencil against his chin, resuming his slow spin. “Usually are. Still though, doesn’t hurt to check.”   
“Adam? Are you coming back to mine?” Tosh asked, shutting down her computer. It was clear she’d been waiting for them to arrive before heading home for the night, and Adam couldn't decide if it was endearing or irritating. He made a show of checking the time on his phone and then smiled apologetically. “No, sorry. I’ve gotta drop Jonesy back at his place, long day, you know how it is.”  
Tosh just nodded, smiling, “Of course, no worries. How about drinks this weekend?”  
Adam smiled. “Sure. We can all go together.” He knew that wasn’t what Tosh had meant, she was suggesting some sort of date, just the two of them, and he wasn’t particularly a fan of the whole relationship thing; it was starting to get a little too serious for him, but he needed it. It made Owen uncomfortable and kept him out of the way, it kept Gwen quiet, kept Tosh entertained. They were the ones he needed to worry about, he’d blasted Jack so full of fake memories there was no way he’d ever catch on, and Ianto wasn’t exactly going to tell anybody about their little activities. He’d just gotten everyone fully settled with their new sets of memories, aside from needing to give them the occasional tweak, he didn’t want to have to go tearing it all up again when he could flirt meaninglessly with Tosh twice a day and get the same result. He’d successfully avoided having to attend every date she’d suggested in the last six months, and she didn’t seem to mind all that much.  
Tosh nodded, though she looked a little crestfallen. Adam pretended not to notice, or at least Ianto assumed he was pretending rather than actually being oblivious, he was usually pretty good at reading a room, even if it was only because he’d put all of the emotions there. “What about you, Owen? Fancy coming for a drink this weekend?”  
Owen, who had been walking up the stairs, appeared, smoothing his cardigan down nervously. “Um... um maybe, yeah. We’ll see.”   
Adam just nodded and then spun back to Jack. “Right, are we needed for anything else here tonight or are we free to head home? Only, I taped Countdown and I actually want to watch it this side of Christmas if I can.”  
Jack smiled and nodded, flicking a hand out. “Yes, go. Good work today, all of you. Though I am still going to need you or Ianto to do me a write-up of Tenby, for official reasons.”   
Adam nodded again. “Not much to write up, but sure thing. I’ll get it done tomorrow.” He stood, stretching and reaching for his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder. “Come on, Jonesy.”   
Ianto stood up, hands in his pockets, following Adam out of the Hub and up the stairs, back through the Tourist Office.

“You still want that coffee?” Adam asked, swinging his car keys on his finger. “We can stop by on the way to your place.”  
Ianto nodded, looking down at him. “Long night planned?”   
He already knew the answer to that one. Nights after were always long, full of debates and thinking and reviewing. Adam would sometimes spend the night on the sofa at his, but that didn’t seem to be the case tonight, as Ianto remembered with a start he was still supposed to be mad at him.   
“Yep. We’ve got things to talk about, you and me.” Adam said, and then left it at that, getting back into the car.   
Ianto frowned a little. Adam wasn’t one for ominous statements, he typically said it as it was, and Ianto wasn’t a fan of obscure comments. He climbed into the passenger seat and Adam revved the engine again - another new habit.   
He did that a lot, changed habits. A new way of speaking, a new way of acting, little details that didn’t match from one day to another. Ianto suspected it probably had something to do with the taking and giving of memories, maybe a little bit of the person he was changing would occasionally slip through, line up with his own memories and thoughts. That would make sense, he supposed.   
Adam looked across at him for a brief moment. “What are you thinking about?”  
“You.”  
“Always dangerous.”  
Ianto laughed a little, and then looked at Adam, their eyes meeting. “The people that you take memories from, do parts of them sometimes slip through?”  
Adam sighed softly and turned his focus back to the road. “Sometimes, yeah. It’s like a bridge, almost, connecting us. It’s one of those things that you can just do, like whistling or curling your tongue. I can’t explain how I do it, I just can. It links me to them, and I can just pull the memories out, re-arrange them or add new ones. It’s a bit like their brain is an open filing cabinet, you can see all of the memories in a big row and I can pick them out and examine them, and slip things in or out. The memories that I take, I usually just discard them but yeah, sometimes they’ll stick. Why?”  
“You pick up new habits out of nowhere, or you’ll say things that you’ve never said before, and act in ways you’ve never done like you’ve been doing it all your life. And I was wondering if it was…”  
“If it was parts of them? Bits of their memories inside me?” Adam changed lanes and nodded. “It is.”   
“What do you do with the memories? The ones that you take that don’t become part of you?”   
“Throw them away.”  
“They just disappear? Into nothing?”   
Adam shrugs. “Not always. Sometimes they come back, like Gwen’s did, though that might be because I didn’t mean to remove them. For the sake of what we’re doing I usually just make them dormant, lock them away. It’s less energy than completely getting rid of them and considering they’re about to die it doesn’t make a lot of difference anyway, unless it’s something we absolutely can’t risk them remembering.”   
Ianto nodded. “And you just...do that?”   
“What do you mean?”  
“It doesn’t bother you? Changing people, changing yourself?”  
“Not really. You do what you have to in order to survive. Are you doubting what we do? Are you doubting me?” His voice took on a dangerous edge, and Ianto glanced away out of the window, frowning.   
“Of course I’m not. Just thinking.”  
“Like I said, that’s dangerous.” Adam pulled the car up sharply, and Ianto blinked a few times. He could feel Adam’s fingers tight around his arm, and looked down at it. Adam was smiling, that anger of a few seconds ago already gone. “Off you go then, get me something while you’re in there as well?”   
Ianto nodded and pulled himself from Adam’s grip, muttering a quiet “sure” as he exited the car, loose change rattling in his pocket. A couple of coffees, that at least he could do without fucking up. He closed the car door behind him and took a deep breath, laying his own hand over the spot on his arm where Adam’s had been. He tossed a glance back at the inside of the car, smiled to himself a little, and then walked inside.


	8. Chapter 8

“Turn that shit off.” Adam pointed at the radio before Ianto had even locked the front door behind them. Ianto slipped the door key into the glass fruit bowl on the side and frowned, looking at the coffee table. He thought he’d turned that off before he’d left this morning. Obviously not. It was still blaring out that same detuned static, but with the occasional burst of music or dialogue from a nearby frequency punctuating the buzzing. He pushed past Adam, moving around the living room and switching the radio off, pulling out the plug for good measure.  
Adam nodded, dropping himself into the armchair nearest the door and stretching, taking a sip from his coffee. “Good. Now, first order of business?”  
Ianto kicked at the two holdalls they’d carried up from the car, unzipping the first one. His clothes. He straightened up, examining each item piece by piece.  
“There’s blood on the collar.” Adam pointed out helpfully, watching Ianto turn his shirt this way and that to inspect it. Ianto nodded, screwed it into a ball and tossed it across the room to be put into the wash, reaching for the next piece. With a job like Torchwood, coming home with blood on their clothes was almost routine, so getting stains out was all but second nature, and it didn’t really bother him anymore. Blood was blood, whether it was Weevil or human. Or something else entirely. Adam was different though, everything had to be perfect, meticulous. Ianto had originally thought that he was paranoid about getting caught, but that hadn’t made sense, because even if somebody did figure it out, he could just make them forget it again. Over time he’d come to realise that the long and short of it all was that Adam was just dramatic. He liked to make a big fuss over it, he liked the attention and the theatrics - it was just another way of ensuring he was at the forefront of everybody's minds. 

Adam watched him work with interest. He was so very different to the man he’d met on his first day at Torchwood, only six months ago. Not that it had been six months to Ianto, obviously. Adam had decided it was easier to leave him with the three years of fake memories that he already had rather than have to rejumble everything around again, and Ianto didn’t seem to mind it all that much. He knew those memories were fake, of course he did, but they felt real enough to him, and Adam had made sure that was all that mattered. Adjusting him had been surprisingly easy, he’d taken to his new memories like a duck to water, had barely questioned them. It had gone far smoother than the others. Some of them had held memories they really didn’t want to part with, but even the ones Ianto seemed fond of, it was easy enough for Adam to convince him to let them go. On top of that, the little questioning that he had done had been simple enough to adjust, to put right. Adam would maybe go so far as to say that Ianto was used to having his memories shaken about, or far more used to it than the others had been at any rate. He was, in essence, a completely different person now, without ever actually having realised that he’d changed even a bit. It was remarkable, what the human mind could adjust to. Ianto had believed that he was a killer and so a killer he had become. The old Ianto Jones would never have stooped so low, but this was the new and improved Ianto Jones, and he was open to almost anything. 

To be so openly revered was exhausting though, Adam found. To have Ianto so obviously worship him, it almost got irritating. He knew it was necessary to stop him from getting bored, from getting tangled up into things that he shouldn’t, but that drift between them was happening more often now. That was twice today he’d had to change his memories, set him secure in his beliefs that what they were doing was right. There was some nagging doubt in the back of Adam’s mind, some fear that Ianto was starting to resist his influences. He needed to be at the forefront of Ianto’s memories, needed to be clear and important in order to stay alive. As much as it was fun having Ianto at his beck and call, bowing down to his every order, he preferred the moments when they were equals - or at least as close to equals as they could get. Watching Owen fawn and simper over Tosh was aggravating, the man was so pathetic and submissive that it made Adam want to swing for him sometimes, and the idea of having Ianto follow him around like a lost puppy was borderline unbearable. He liked the moments where Ianto wanted his guidance, but was strong enough to hold his own as well. He didn’t like the moments where Ianto challenged him, and he didn’t like the moments where Ianto wholly depended on him either. He liked the middle, though the middle seemed to be getting harder and harder to maintain.  
Adam couldn’t work out why he was changing so suddenly, what was making him go from revering him to despising him and back again in the space of a few minutes. He supposed that it was probably something to do with his interference with his head. Somebody rewrites your entire thought process every couple of days and it's bound to start getting to you eventually, old memories, old ideas start to push their way through the false layers. As it was, Adam’s surprised they’d lasted the six months they had without more issues like this. He supposed it was a similar effect to long term Retcon use. Retcon. Now there was an idea. Factory reset, wipe him clean, build him up from ground zero. It would be messy, sure, but it would work. 

Ianto kicked the holdall to one side and dropped down onto the sofa, the sudden motion shaking Adam from his thoughts. Ianto was eating a slice of toast. Cold toast, Adam wanted to assume, judging by the partially screwed up cling film ball on the coffee table.  
“That cold?”  
Ianto nodded.  
“How can you eat that?”  
Ianto shrugged, looking across at him. “Hungry. That’s what humans tend to do when they’re hungry, typically. They eat.”  
“But it’s cold.”  
Ianto shrugged again. “So? It’s toast. It’s not like I’m eating a cold roast dinner or something. It’s basically a sandwich at this point.”  
“Hasn’t the butter gone all weird, though? You melted it when you made the toast but isn’t it going to be solid again now?”  
A third shrug.  
Adam took another sip of his coffee. “I think I’ll pass, thanks.”  
“I wasn’t offering you any.”  
“I wouldn’t accept it if you were.”  
“Well, I’m not.” Ianto sat up again, reaching for his coffee. “It’s my toast, I’ve earned this toast. I’ve worked for this toast. What did you do for this toast? Nothing.”  
Ianto leaned forward and crushed the cling-film ball in his hand, rolling it between his thumb and index finger. “Look, I’ve eaten it, it’s gone now, so it doesn’t matter either way.”  
Adam laughed, and then reached for the remote on the coffee table, switching the television on. Ianto’s apartment wasn’t exactly the most homely in Cardiff, but was better than his. He spent most of his nights at Tosh’s, another way of keeping her quiet and happy, so his own apartment was barely furnished beyond the absolute essentials. He hadn’t quite gotten around to setting himself up any sort of credit card, or even a bank account. He still didn’t legally exist on Earth, after all. And it’s not like he had any objects of sentimental value, no childhood photos, no old plates and china cups passed down by generations. He had a few knick knacks that he’d picked up cheap at car boot sales and made up some half-assed stories for, but that was about it. It wasn’t like anybody else ever went to his flat apart from Ianto, and it’s not like Adam had to hide the truth about who he was from him.  
Adam flicked through the tv channels absently, not entirely sure what he wanted to watch. The news would have been the obvious choice but he liked the build up, the suspense of not knowing whether they’d found the body until it appeared somewhere weeks later, once he’d all but forgotten about it. They wouldn’t have found her yet anyway, whatever her name was, the girl. With any luck they wouldn’t find her at all. Serial killers, missing people, they weren’t Torchwood’s jurisdiction, they dealt with aliens and aliens alone. The other deaths hadn’t even appeared on their radar, and Adam was hoping if this girl was found, it wouldn’t be for a while. Long enough that they couldn’t establish an accurate time of death, at least. Them being in Tenby on the same day as a girl being murdered, even Jack wouldn’t be able to overlook that. Best case scenario, he’d chastise them for being wrong about the Weevil. Worst case? Worst case didn’t bear thinking about.  
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not watch Dickinson’s Real Deal.”  
Ianto’s voice pulled Adam from his thoughts again, and he blinked at the television for a moment before cracking a smile. “Right up our alley, isn’t it? It’s all defenseless old ladies and chipped collectables.”  
“Come on, put something else on. Something exciting.”  
“Do you want to watch Friends?”  
Ianto made a soft noise of disbelief in the back of his throat and Adam laughed.  
“Teasing, Jonesy. Teasing. No, I think I’m going to go. Early night, big day tomorrow. Paperwork to fill out, all that good stuff. Good day, though. I want you to go for somebody bigger next time, don’t be afraid.”  
“Adam, she cut me.”  
“You hesitated. That second blow was clumsy.” Adam turned on the sofa to face Ianto, splaying his hands out. “It was dark, you couldn’t see, you swung wide, it gave her a chance. I’ve told you about using your elbows, haven’t I? Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. Be quick, be efficient, be careful.”  
Ianto leant back against the arm of the sofa, swilling his coffee around in the cup. “There’s an easier way to do it though, surely?”  
“Variety is the spice of life, my friend. Do it the same way each time, gets boring. You beat one to death, you stab another, strangle the third. Gotta find what works best for you. Nothing involving a weapon though, I’d say. Knives have to be cleaned, ballistics can be traced. I can’t cover for you forever. Eventually you’re going to have to learn to do it yourself.”  
The apartment was silent for a moment before Ianto spoke again.

“Why do we do this, Adam?”  
Adam narrowed his eyes. “What?”  
“Why...Why do we do this? What do we get out of it?”  
“Power. Control, Ianto. Fearlessness. Godliness. The world is a terrifying and tumultuous place but every man is his own god. Every man is in control of his own destiny. And you can live a boring, sheltered life like most of the population or you can show the world that you aren’t going to take it’s crap lying down.”  
Adam sighed, and stood up. Explaining, reasoning, he’s pretty sure it isn’t working on him anymore. Time to move on to other things. He hadn’t really had to force Ianto to idolise him since they’d just started out, their dynamic had evolved past that, but if he was really going to start questioning Adam’s authority, then he was going to lose the privilege of forming his own opinions. For a little while, at least.  
He took Ianto’s chin in his hand, tilted his head up so that he was looking him in the eyes. “You do it because I tell you to. I do it because it’s fun. You get some sleep now, okay?”  
He let go of Ianto’s face, his hand dropping back to his side, Ianto looking up at him with those wide, eager eyes of his. Okay, maybe having someone at his beck and call wasn’t quite so annoying after all.  
“I said get some sleep. Okay?”  
“...Okay.”  
“Sweet dreams.”


	9. Chapter 9

The Hub was quiet when Ianto entered. That was always a good sign. It meant nobody was accusing him of murder, at least. Another day without having to deal with that particular issue. There was no sign of Jack, though that wasn’t exactly unusual. Ever since Ianto had broken it off with him, things had been different between them. And not the kind of different that things should be after a break up, it was the kind of different that Ianto knew meant Adam had gotten involved. It wasn’t like Jack was avoiding him out of some post-relationship awkwardness, Ianto knew well enough what that felt like.  
It seemed more like Jack was avoiding him simply because he didn’t consider Ianto important enough to pay attention to most of the time, which was the way it had been before, when he’d first joined the team. Most likely then, Jack didn’t remember ever loving him. That realisation didn’t hurt, and Ianto hadn’t been sure if that was a good thing or not. The most annoying thing about Jack to him remained the fact that he couldn’t be killed. He was an obstacle, and an awkward one at that. It wasn’t like he would ever really have figured out what was going on, not by himself at least, Adam would never have let it come to that, but Ianto still didn’t like him for some reason. It wasn’t resentment, it was something else.  
He startled a little as Gwen touched his shoulder, shaking him out of his thoughts. “Ianto? Everything okay?”  
He nodded, swallowing. “Yeah, sorry. Just tired. Didn’t get much sleep.”  
That wasn’t a lie, he hadn’t gotten much sleep at all. He’d been thinking about what Adam had said. About variety, about killing. He thought a lot about what Adam said in those days. Everything had seemed okay, at first. Adam had gone home, and Ianto had gotten ready for bed without a second thought, just like he did every night, and he’d even gotten so far as almost falling asleep when the fuzzy feeling finally died away and the first little piece of doubt had crept back into his mind. It hadn’t been about what they were doing. He liked killing, as much as he was sometimes loath to admit it, liked the power that it gave him, and he liked Adam, some times more than others. He liked the rush of danger, and more than that, he liked being in control of the danger. So much of Torchwood was being on the receiving end of pain and suffering, violence and grief and tragedy. There was only so much control you could have over something non-human. Ianto had spent years working with Weevils, but that didn’t mean that one wouldn’t tear his throat out the second he slipped up and gave it the opportunity. Working for Torchwood was constantly looking over your shoulder, if not for aliens then for the many human enemies that they’d made over the years. It just felt good to be on the other side of all that pain and suffering for once.  
It felt good to know that he had power, that he had the ability to change somebody's entire world with a single action. It made him feel like maybe his life wasn’t pointless after all. They’d acted like Torchwood had given him a purpose, but it hadn’t. All Torchwood had ever given him was sleep full of nightmares and a fast track to an early grave. Adam had been the one to give him purpose. It wasn’t the knowledge of taking a life that he didn’t like, it was the process. He knew what it felt to be on the receiving end of unimaginable pain; it wasn’t nice. He didn’t like the idea of making people go through that, despite the end that it brought him. He knew that Adam had mentioned variety, finding what worked best for him, but it didn’t seem fair, using people as test subjects on the path to finding his true pleasure. He knew for himself what being a test subject felt like, the dehumanisation, the detachment it brought. Again, he knew it was to satisfy the ending that he craved, but that he didn’t mean he had to like it. He might have been a murderer but he at least let them have their dignity. As much as he liked the knowledge that he was in control, that he could take his time, if he was going to kill them anyway, for their sakes he might as well do it quickly. And he didn’t necessarily have to pitch it as a mercy thing either, he knew Adam wouldn’t approve of that way of seeing it. It was more efficient, less chance of them getting away, of fighting back. Less chance of somebody else finding them. He’d find the time to bring it up later, he had other things he wanted to talk about today instead.  
Gwen nodded, drawing Ianto’s attention back to her. “Alright, well Adam was looking for you, says if he has to get stuck writing reports then he’s going to make you suffer with him.”  
Ianto tried for a laugh, glancing around the room for any sign of him. “Of course he did. That’s fine, I need to talk to him anyway.”  
“I think he was hiding down in the cells. Owen was doing something earlier, Adam said it was giving him a headache. Though, I think it was just an excuse to get out of Jack’s way for a while.”  
That got his attention. “What? Why?”  
Gwen shrugged. “No idea. Though neither of them looked very pleased. You know Jack isn’t the talkative type at the best of times, and Adam had a face like thunder when he came out, so I didn’t feel like getting involved.”  
Ianto shook his head a little. “That’s fine, don’t worry. I’ll have a word with him. The cells, you said?”  
“No chance at a coffee then?” Gwen teased, and Ianto laughed.  
“Yeah, alright. But only since you asked so nicely.” 

The air of the cells was cold and stale. Ianto could hear the rapid swiping of a pen through the silence, accompanied by a soft humming. It wasn’t a tune that he recognised, but he knew who it was coming from.  
Adam was sitting in the cell furthest away, leaning back against a wall, balancing an open folder on his knees. He was spinning a pen between his thumb and middle finger absently, a flask of coffee tucked into his side. He looked up expectantly at Ianto as he approached, and beckoned him forwards. When Ianto didn’t move after a moment, he cracked a grin. “You can come in, you know? Don’t need to wait for an invitation.”  
Ianto hit the button to open the cell. “What’re you doing in here?”  
“Jack wants the report for what we were up to yesterday, and we need to be on the same page about what lies we’re telling. Hence why the report isn’t being written in the Hub, where everyone can hear us.”  
Ianto raised a hand, pointing over his shoulder in the direction of the ceiling. “Camera’s.”  
Adam gestured with his pen. “They can see but they can’t hear, trust me. You’re not wearing your comms, are you?”  
“No.”  
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. Sit down, start thinking. I’ve got coffee, if you want a cup.”  
Ianto stepped into the cell. “Right, and what’s your plan for getting us out of here when we’re finished?”  
“My jacket hasn’t been thrown on the floor where the door meets the wall for the fun of it. Is it the best doorstop in the universe? No. Does it do the job? Most of the time. Worst case scenario, we get stuck, we ring Gwen and she lets us out.” Adam rapped the pen on the floor next to him irritably. “Now, come on.”  
Ianto looked down at the floor before sitting himself down obediently, if a little awkwardly. “I wanted to talk to you, actually.”  
Adam glanced across at him for a moment, only half-interested. “Can it wait? Jack says we can’t go home tonight until this is done, and I don’t trust the Rift not to spit something big and complicated at us before we so much as get two sentences in.”  
“Not really, it’s important.”  
“Everything’s important these days, mate. But the sooner we get this written, the sooner we can put those fears of yours to rest.”  
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”  
Adam sighed and clicked his pen against the ground, shifting a little to face Ianto. “Alright, but make it quick.”

Ianto shuffled against the wall, thinking for a moment. If he’d been having this conversation a few days before, he’d have just come out and said it. But things hadn't been right the last day or so. He’d never had reason to fear Adam before, but he thought he might have then. “If you’re going to...mess around in my head, at least let me know what you’ve changed.”  
Adam stared at him for a moment, seemingly dumbfounded, and then laughed. A small, sharp sound of utter disbelief, a sound Ianto didn’t think he’d ever heard before. “What’s the point in that? If I tell you what I’ve changed, then you can work out how you were before. You can resist it.”  
“I can do that anyway.”  
Adam’s smile dropped. “What?”  
“Last night, when I was going to sleep. There was this fuzzy feeling in my head, so small that I didn’t even notice until it was gone. And I thought to myself, why am I doing this? Because you’d told me to. And you told me how to think, you told me what to think. And then I realised that I’d remembered thinking those things before, somewhere else. And you’d taken them from me. You’d reverted me back to some earlier version of myself.”  
Adam seemed to consider this for a moment and then nodded. “I told you, thinking is dangerous.”  
Ianto shook his head. “That isn’t how this works. How can I trust you if you’re going to do this to me, Adam? How many times have we had this conversation?”  
Adam looked at him, and somehow Ianto could tell he was going to be honest. “This is the first. You’ve only just realised. Part of me is surprised it took this long, part of me was hoping it would take a little longer. But, all the same, I was somewhat prepared for this. It’s more likely to happen the more you change. As the layers build up, they thin, and then they break. Ianto, all this means is that you have to trust me more even now, okay? Stick with what I’ve told you, whatever it is, no matter how much you think you shouldn’t.” He clicked his pen against the floor again.  
“How do I know how much of me is you?” Ianto’s voice was low, dangerous.  
Adam laughed at that. “Ianto, all we are is everybody else. But you’re less me than anybody else in this building. This doesn’t change anything, okay? All I’m doing is reminding you of things that you already know.”  
“You’re not letting me change. You keep telling me to grow, to evolve, that I have to learn to do this on my own, but you’re not letting me. I take a step and you drag me back.”  
“You’re walking in the wrong direction.” Adam pointed his pen at him. “That’s all it is.”  
“But when I turn myself around, I’ll have more practise at walking. Maybe I’ll even be able to run. Right now, you’re forcing me to crawl.”  
Adam lent his head back against the wall and sighed. “That’s not how it works. If I let you choose the direction, you’ll blunder headfirst off a cliff. All this should teach you is how easy it is for old memories to break through. What if that happens to Jack? What if he figures it out? Besides, I get a bit of a rush from it. It’s fun.”  
Ianto pushed himself up so he was standing, towering over Adam. “Fun? Doing it for survival is one thing, I can justify that. But doing it for fun? Adam-”  
“I was doing it to protect us. To protect you. If you start to question me, if you break away from my advice, that’s how you get caught, or hurt, or worse. You’re still a killer, Ianto. You still enjoyed what you were doing at the time, regardless of what you may or may not come to feel later. How do you think they’d view that? The others?”

The two of them stared each other down for a moment, and Adam raised an eyebrow up at Ianto, as if waiting for him to respond. Adam could see the betrayal in his eyes, a betrayal he hadn’t seen in him since he first found out the truth of who Adam was. There’d been none of this fear then, though. At least, he didn’t think so. There had just been acceptance. Not the acceptance of an untouched brain that didn’t know what it was guarding itself against, the acceptance of a brain that had gotten so used to being molded into whatever somebody else wanted that it barely knew how to be a brain of its own.  
Adam saw the moment that Ianto relented, his shoulders slumping, his jaw unclenching. Victory. And he hadn’t even had to lie to get it. “Yeah, yeah. Maybe you have a point. It’s just weird. I always knew that you were poking around in there, changing things, but to be able to tell exactly what you changed...I think I liked it better before.”  
Adam shot him an attempt at a sympathetic smile. “I know mate, trust me. Take it from someone who grew up in a society where this sort of thing is normal - you get used to it. To not knowing if your thoughts are even really yours. It’s a bit different when all of you can do it though, you end up with a sort of hive mind, it’s chaos but it works, somehow. Human minds are so much smaller, so closed off, so it doesn’t go quite as smoothly.”  
Ianto nodded, smoothing down the front of his waistcoat to give himself something to do with his hands.  
Adam patted the ground next to him gently, smiling at Ianto as he sat down. “Come on, let’s just get this sodding thing written.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note - From this note forth, some chapters of this fic will contain references to/discussions of suicide.

Ianto spun lazily on his chair, looking around at the emptiness of the Hub. Adam was right, they’d barely finished the report when the rift had decided to spit something out at them. It hadn’t been a particularly big energy spike, so Jack and Tosh had gone out together to take a look. Barely half an hour later, they’d picked up reports of a Weevil sighting in a local playground, and Adam and Gwen had gone to check that out. At the time, Ianto had been down in the archives sorting out one of the many, many piles of paperwork that it was somebody else’s responsibility to organise, and nobody had bothered to tell him about either of these things. He’d emerged, frustrated and tired, and alone in the Hub. Alone aside from Owen, who was down in his little burrow doing whatever it was that he did when he didn’t have a body to examine. Ianto could hear him, actually. He was humming to himself, some old song that Ianto didn’t know. He probably wasn’t doing anything important then. He could only focus in silence, not that he’d ever dare say something about it. Everyone else in The Hub tended to operate in a sort of organised chaos, with emphasis on the chaos. Not Owen. Owen liked everything neat and by the book. He was a stickler for the rules, which became difficult when the Torchwood Rules changed nearly every day, if not more often.  
Still, whatever task Owen was doing, it mustn’t have been something that required a lot of brainpower if he was humming while he did it, and Ianto liked the reminder that he wasn’t alone. It was easy to feel alone in a world like this, and it was nice to think that he wasn’t. He had something to ask Owen anyway. He’d bring it up later though, not while the doctor was doing whatever it was that he was doing. Even if it wasn’t an important task, Owen didn’t like being interrupted while he was in the middle of something. He didn’t ever complain about it, but he got that lost look in his eyes like he was being forced to reevaluate his place in the universe every time he got distracted halfway through a task. So, Ianto would wait until he was done, as long as that was before everybody else got back. He trusted Owen would keep the conversation to himself if Ianto asked him to, but he’d still rather do it at a time he knew they wouldn’t be interrupted by anybody. Especially Adam, who’d likely blast him so full of contradictory memories that he’d forget his own name if he ever found out.  
Ianto sighed, and started up his slow spin again. He didn’t have a lot to do right now. The others hadn’t called in to say they needed backup, the Hub was probably as clean as he was likely to get it, and he’d done so much organising he thought his brain might start to leak out of his ears if he so much as looked at a divider. So, for now it was just a matter of waiting. For either Owen to finish whatever he was doing, or for somebody to come back. Whichever came first.

Fate was not on his side. Fate was never on his side, because not even two minutes later, Gwen and Adam had come back with a Weevil in tow, and they’d only just gotten that sorted when Jack and Tosh arrived with a piece of alien tech that had slipped through the rift. And then the relative quiet of the Hub had been shattered again.  
Ianto had slunk off to the archives at the first opportunity. Not to do any work, just to get out of the way for a while, and he’d been less than pleased when Adam had followed him.  
“Alright, Jonesy?”  
Ianto nodded but didn’t look back, and heard the sound of Adam jogging after him.  
Adam caught hold of his shoulder, half-turning Ianto to face him.“Sorry, I don’t think I quite caught your answer.”  
“I’m fine, Adam. Just thinking.”  
Adam raised an eyebrow. “I’d have thought you’d have done enough of that for one day after our conversation earlier.”  
Ianto resisted the urge to shake himself out of Adam’s grip. “Apparently not.”  
“Do you still need some things clearing up?”  
“I’m fine, thank you.” Ianto’s words were sharp, and the meaning clear. _Stay out of my head, until I get everything sorted out again, at least. _  
Adam nodded, backing away and saluting a little. “Roger that, Jonesy.”  
“Why don’t you go and see if Tosh needs a hand with that alien tech she found. You’re good with that sort of thing.”  
Adam’s smile dropped, the dig not going unnoticed. But it only fazed him for a second, and then that grin returned. The grin that made it impossible for you to think badly of him because it made him look so friendly, so at ease. Ianto was slowly getting wise to that as well. Having little bits of Adam in his head made it easier for him to understand the aliens motives, and his actions. Adam had always seemed so far above him, this godlike figure that he’d never be able to comprehend, but the field was starting to level now. Whether Adam was losing ground or Ianto was gaining it he didn’t know, but the two of them were more or less on equal footing. Ianto liked that, but he wasn’t so sure that Adam felt the same way. He couldn’t say for definite, but it seemed likely. Adam tended to be easygoing, but he must have been feeling a certain amount of pressure at this point, knowing that the layers were starting to break. Who’d crumble next? Tosh? Jack? And what would happen when they did?  
“Yeah.” Adam nodded. “Yeah, alright, I’ll see you later mate?”  
“I’m sure you will.” __

__The Hub was once again quiet when Ianto emerged, only this time it was on purpose. Quiet afternoons, he knew exactly what time everybody got off. Jack let Gwen go first, let her have dinner with Rhys. If he called her back in for any reason, it wouldn’t be for another few hours yet. Tosh and Adam would have gone home next. Even if they’d left together they’d have gone in separate cars. Maybe Adam would have gone to Tosh’s, maybe he wouldn’t. From what Adam had said, even if he did go to Tosh’s they spent most of the evening doing their own things in silence, they slept separately. Adam didn’t like Tosh all that much. He didn’t bother to hide it, not from Ianto at least. He hadn’t minded at first, but he’d gotten sick of her pretty quickly. She was boring, in his eyes. All humans were boring, even the ones that interested him. But that was the nature of humans, he supposed. They over complicated things they didn’t have to, and under complicated the things that could do with a bit more nuance.  
Anyway, that was Adam and Tosh out of the picture. Jack would typically go out for what he referred to as a bit of fresh air. He’d be gone most of the night, if not all of it. Ianto knew that well enough by now. And that just left Owen. Owen, who would work late because he was nothing if not meticulous and nothing if not diligent.  
And so Ianto made his way back up into the main Hub, and as he suspected, it was empty. He could hear Owen muttering to himself, moving backwards and forwards. It wasn’t the tuneless hum from earlier, he was definitely talking to himself, in a hushed but excited tone.  
Ianto approached the top of the stairs, looking down at him. He couldn’t make out the words that Owen was saying, but it was clearly something that he viewed as important. He was also in the process of wiping down all of his surfaces again, which was one of the final stages of his nightly clean and tidy. Earlier than usual, which was surprising but not necessarily weird. Owen liked order, but he wasn’t a routine freak. _ _

__Ianto smiled to himself and reached out a hand, rattling one of the chain railings that looped around the edge of the raised platform. Owen startled, dropping the scalpel that he was wiping down onto the tray with a clatter before looking up and realising it was only Ianto.  
“Didn’t know you were still here.”  
Ianto smiled against, started making for the steps. “Just on my way out. Had a quick question for you, if you don’t mind?”  
Owen looked over his shoulder, trying to keep Ianto in sight as he headed down the steps. “What sort of question?”  
“A hypothetical. But one I’d prefer that you keep between us.”  
Owen put down the scalpel that he’d picked back up and turned to face Ianto, smiling. “I think I can manage that. Ask away.”  
Ianto tried to make the question sound as natural as possible. “If your own professional medical opinion, what’s the quickest way to kill somebody?”  
Owen’s expression changed almost immediately into something that Ianto couldn’t recognise, his brow furrowing, arms folding tightly across his chest. “Why?”  
“For the sake of debate, humour me.” Ianto tried. “It’s a bullet through the head, right? Has to be.”  
“Depends. I’ve heard it said that decapitation is quick with a clean enough blade.”  
“And it’s painless, right? Decapitation?”  
Owen nodded, though he seemed unsure. “Again, it likely would be with a clean enough blade. But there’s a lot of things that factor into these debates.”  
Ianto pressed on, ignoring the fact that these were dangerous questions and that Owen was clearly uncomfortable. “Right, okay, and strangulation?”  
“Look, Ianto, why are you asking me this?”  
“Just answer the question, Owen.”  
The doctor spun back around, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Ianto as he answered with low hurried words. “Quick and easy if it’s done properly, messy and possibly painful if not.”  
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Ianto teased, leaning against the railing at the bottom of the stairs. “That’s all I wanted, thanks Owen.”  
There was a moment of silence, and Ianto had turned and was making his way back up the stairs when Owen’s voice stopped him in his tracks. “You know, Ianto, if...well, if there’s something you need forgetting….I’d start with Retcon.”  
Ianto felt a swell of panic and hurried up the remainder of the steps. He tried not to look back, but couldn’t stop himself from catching a glimpse of Owen looking up at him as he walked away. He could feel the man’s eyes on him almost the entire way out of the Hub, and he was standing in the tourist office by the time he realised his expression hadn’t been one of suspicion, but of concern._ _


End file.
